Not Your Sunday Times: NOFX Was Punk In Drublic

NOFX guitarist Eric Melvin

NOFX’s performance at Boston’s House of Blues last night was a total mess of epic proportions, but the band wouldn’t have had it any other way. They took the stage half-cocked, drinks in hand and ready to have fun. As fans affectingly chanted “NOFX Sucks” the band tore through a set of career-spanning tunes that were connected by some of the wittiest stage banter I have ever heard. They were far from tight, but the comedy alone was worth the ticket price.

Sure, there were more stalled starts than can be counted, and the sound guy was drunk (leading to some ear-splitting feedback at times), but their carefree interactions with the audience were almost as much of a highlight as their run through, “Stick It In My Eye.”

Singer Fat Mike made plenty of jokes about college kids taking Adderall, his early childhood in Newton, Mass, and the group even took a couple of well-intended jabs at local acts like Dropkick Murphys and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones.

The musical element of the performance was far from polished but it didn’t have to be. NOFX makes punk music and take themselves far from seriously. Anti-Flag, who played an energized set before NOFX, worked the crowd up with messages of unity, brotherhood, and resistance to capitalism and military aggression. Although both acts have a similar set of fans, the force-fed message of Anti-Flag couldn’t be farther from the on-the-fly humor NOFX brought on-stage. Anti-Flag encourages tolerance of all races, ethnicities and sexes. NOFX, whose makeup consists of “White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean,” made jokes about Jews, Mexicans, and even the death of Steve Jobs (“That’s just what the world needs. Less jobs”).

I’m sure they could have squeezed in an extra song or two if they’d been a little sharper, but if they’d been any tighter, it wouldn't have been as much fun.